Newsletter

Hi, February 14, 2015

Happy Valentine’s Day! We had a great party yesterday! The chocolate fountain and pink cupcakes were definitely a hit! The kids also loved the valentine boxes and the scratch off cards. Passing out valentines cards and treats was also super fun and exciting. Thank you to all the families who donated supplies. Thank you to our homeroom moms, Colleen Komatz and Darcy Hollingsworth, for organizing and running our party. It was wonderful!

Friday evening, my mom, Ms. Fry, and I took dinner (lasagna, salad, bread, as well as cookie cake and cupcakes for dessert) to the STARRY Emergency Shelter. We also gave them bags filled with valentines made by our FCE students and candy. We even had some handmade bracelets and gift cards from Cinemark, Outback, Target, and Walgreens. The house parents were very appreciative and overwhelmed with the generosity of our FCE community! Thank you so much to the Service Club, to classrooms who made cards, and to our staff and families for the donations. It was wonderful to help the children to have a Happy Valentine’s Day.

FYI-Progress Reports were in last week’s Thursday folders.

On Tuesday, we had a great visit with our pen pals from The Court Retirement Facility. We interviewed them about their favorite people, places, and things to help us get some ideas for our expository writing. We shared our personal narratives and made words using the letters VALENTINE. We gave them decorated foam hearts with our photos on them and played some games together. It was a fun visit!

On Wednesday, we took a Writing Curriculum Based Assessment. The children worked hard and we will use data from the assessment to drive our instruction in writing.

Reading-In reading this week, we finished our literacy circle books and have been working hard on our Book Talk Presentations. Some are making Power Points, some are creating posters, and some are acting out a scene from the book then talking about the entire book. A few children are almost done and we will begin our presentations on Wednesday. They are working well in groups and doing very well. I can’t wait to see the finished products. We will then work on reading more nonfiction using books about Antarctica.

Writing-We will continue to discuss the characteristics of Personal Narratives and Expository Writing. We are gathering a few more entries and ideas for our expository pieces. Writing a central idea and then explaining it using reasons and examples with a strong conclusion, is our focus. We will also continue to work on revising and editing using mentor sentences.

Social Studies-Texas Revolution is our topic and we will read about it this week.

Dates to Remember:
Monday, February 16-No school for students
Tuesday, February 17-Reading Logs due, Tutorials from 2:45-3:45
Wednesday, February 18-No Summary and Response due-Reading Homework packet due on Friday
Thursday, February 19-Writing Club from 2:45-3:45
Friday, February 20-Spelling Test, Vocabulary test, Reading Homework packet due

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy this beautiful weather!

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for sharing your children with me.

Sincerely,
Pam

Newsletter

Hi, February 8, 2015

Happy Valentine’s Day! We have a busy week ahead. It is going to be great!

Tuesday-Our pen pals are coming to visit! We will be decorating foam hearts for them with our photos on them and writing cards for them. We will interview them about their favorite people, places, and things with reasons to help us get more ideas for expository writing. We will also play games and make so crafts with hearts together. We love when our pen pals come. You are welcome to join us from about 9:30-10:30 in our classroom.

Group and Spring Individual Photos will be taken on Tuesday.

Wednesday-CBA for writing-We will have a Curriculum Based Assessment for writing. It will include some passages with multiple-choice questions about revisions and editing. Then the students will plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish a composition in response to a prompt. The children will be working on this assessment for most of the day on Wednesday. The data from this test will guide our instruction. It will let us know what the students have mastered and what they still need to work on in fourth grade writing. Thank you for encouraging your child to try his/her best and work hard, but not be overly stressed out by this day.

Thursday-Service Club Meeting-We will make Valentines for the children at the STARRY Emergency Shelter in Round Rock. We will organize the valentines made by the classes into bags for the children and make little gifts for them. I will drop off dinner and the bags for the children at the shelter on Friday afternoon. If you would like to donate something for them, go to this link. Thank you so much! http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0a4ba8ad292-valentine

Friday-We will have a Valentine’s Day party at 1:30. Here is a list of the names of the children in our class. If you bring valentines, please bring one for every child in class. We want everyone to be included in the fun. Ms. Komatz and Ms. Hollingsworth are very excited about the party. Here is the link to sign up to donate supplies for our party.
www.SignUpGenius.com/go/20F0A4BA8AD292-valentines

Here are the names of the children in our class. Thank you for including everyone.
Rachel
Lilly B.
Erin
Madi
Kayla
Jacob
Alli
Isabelle
Luke
Joey
Celine
Jace
Hana
Lily P.
Sebastien
Parker
Graeme
Joshua
Jordan
Jayden

RRISD Strategic Planning
After our four community forums and our 14 focus groups, Round Rock ISD is now asking EVERY member of the community – all students, parents, community members, and partners – to complete our Strategic Planning Survey. The data collected from the survey, focus groups, and forums will be presented to our Design Team at the end of February. That group of 40 students, staff, parents and community members will be tasked with designing action plans to map out five-to-ten years of innovation and growth for Round Rock ISD. That plan will be presented to our Board of Trustees in spring 2015 for adoption, rejection or modification.

Upcoming PTA Meeting - February 10
The next PTA meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 10 beginning at 6:00pm. After the general meeting, we will hear a presentation titled "Don't Stand By, Stand Up." This anti-bullying presentation shares valuable information and will begin at 7:00pm.


Read about our week:

Reading-We will be finishing up our book club or literature circle books. YEAH! This week we will work on projects to share our books with others. The kids are very excited about being creative and choosing a project for their book. They will present their book talk/project on Thursday and Friday in class. Presentations will be about 3-5 minutes each. The projects need to include the title of the book, the author, a brief summary of the book (without giving away the ending!), and the theme of the book and why. They will also tell a description of one of the character and how the character changed in the book, using text evidence. Next week we will work with reading and responding to non-fiction text.

Writing-We finished writing personal narratives and shared them last week. We will gather entries for expository writing this week. We will also continue to work with mentor sentences to teach us about grammar, capitalization, and punctuation.

Social Studies-We learned more about empresarios last week and will begin learning about the Texas Revolution this week.

Dates to Remember:

Monday, February 9-Reading Logs due, Tutorials from 2:45-3:45

Tuesday, February 10-Group and Individual Photos will be taken, Pen Pal Visit from 9:30-10:30, Tutorials from 2:45-3:45, PTA meeting at 6:00, Bullying presentation at 7:00pm

Wednesday, February 11-CBA Writing- No Summary and Responses due this week

Thursday, February 12-FCE Service Club-2:45-3:45

Friday, February 13-Spelling test, Vocabulary test, No summary and response due this week, Valentine’s Day Party 1:30-2:30

Monday, February 16-No school for students

Tuesday, February 17-Reading log due

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend and a great week!

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam